I can't seem to find a way to kill the Ogre in the DA2 demo. It appears to be possible, as he goes down to 30% health, then I run out of breath (and potions) and eventually die.
Is there a fool-proof strategy to deal with this guy and his darkspawn buddies?
There's no trick, it is just a normal battle. Remember that you can select the other members of your party to give them orders, including telling them to drink potions. I had my tank hold the ogre, while my other two characters quickly dispatched the adds. Then I could focus everyone on the ogre. I did end up drinking all 5 of the potions I was holding, but everyone came out alive. Keep in mind that on normal level (which the demo is locked to) there is no friendly fire, so if you have a mage with fireball, you can toss it right into the middle of the fight and it won't hurt your characters.
I used the Mage class during the demo, and while the ogre did manage to slaughter my entire team besides the Mage, I was able to just kite (run in a large circle and avoid getting in melee range) the ogre and all the extra guys that came with him.
I simply ran in a circle and spammed Fireball until all his friends were dead (popping "mana" potions as needed, since the demo throws them at you) and then pecked away at him with the Direct Damage Ice spell (I can't recall the name exactly, I want to say it was Frostbite though).
Friend was having a similar issue and did it on his first try adapting this strategy, so pretty easy to use.
I played the demo as two hand weapon wielding warrior and had no problem at all, just focus all DPS on ogre and used AOE abilities to take down adds while they came to him.
